Fiona Keating meets Elena Glurdjidze

By Fiona Keating on January 7th 2010

Ballerinas have a reputation, whether justified or not, for having an interesting relationship with food. Obviously they need to be as light as a feather, so the Big Mac meals tend to be a rarity for them. Anyway, before I can even ask Elena what her diet's like, I notice she's carrying a Caffe Nero bag, filled with what looks suspiciously like a pastry. I feel relieved, for some reason, that she has bucked my views on dancers eating next to nothing.

I'm curious to find out more - and she is quick to let me know that she likes to cook and eat good food. “I love sweets, especially chocolate,” she says. “I eat when I feel my body needs some energy. On the day of a performance I always eat pasta as it digests quickly. I eat at about 2pm and then at 5pm I have green tea with honey and a banana.”

Nevertheless, for some roles it's necessary to have a lean, mean look. “You have to be very skinny, especially for Manon. I lost two kilos because I looked better, longer.” In the ballet, the courtesan has a tortured life and eventually dies in her lover’s arms. “If you look really healthy, it’s not going to look authentic,” says Elena.

Her typical day sounds exhausting. “I get up very early, between six and seven in the morning because I have to get my son Alexander ready for school.” An hour of Pilates kicks off her strenuous routine. “For me it helps to work all the right muscles. It prepares the body and is a good warm-up for classes.”

From there, it’s straight into ballet class to improve technical ability and then into rehearsals before the show. If Elena doesn’t have an evening performance, quite often she’ll dance at a function. She met her husband when she danced at Vinopolis in Waterloo at a reception held by the Georgian Embassy.

Elena has danced with English National Ballet since 2002 and was promoted to Senior Principal in 2007. She dances all the leading classical roles with the company and this Christmas will perform in The Snow Queen, Giselle and The Nutcracker. The ballerina is at the top of her game - and it’s a very difficult game. I ask Elena why she has succeeded. “It’s not just about having a great physique but you also need brains, co-ordination and acting skills. You also need good teachers and I was very lucky to study at the Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg as this was the very best training I could have.”

To be a ballerina requires total focus and many sacrifices. When Elena left home to study in St Petersburg, her mother would spend hours trying to phone her. “I was very homesick and cried many tears in my first months there.”

Her mother was a great inspiration. “She always believed in me and would come to my school to watch me dance. Even when the teacher was not very happy with me and said I should give up ballet, my mother said that the only person who could dance in the class was her daughter. She was proved right as I was the only one who became a principal dancer.”

Becoming a mother has also made a difference to Elena’s dancing. “Since I had my child, I’ve started to dance even better. My priorities have changed and the things that used to upset me don’t matter so much. I’m much calmer and think first. I’ve started to dance differently, with more freedom and feel at peace on stage.”

But it wasn’t easy for Elena to come back after her pregnancy. “I put on a lot of weight,” she laughs. “I ate everything. Even my husband said to me you must stop eating because you will explode! I was huge. I put on 27 kilos which is more than half my weight.” However, with Elena’s steely determination, she managed to lose the weight in four and a half months. “I don’t know how I did it. But it was so difficult. It wasn’t just the weight but it was difficult to get back into shape.”

There’s no doubt that the ballerina is a perfectionist. During our cover shoot, the photographer Chris Bissell was in seventh heaven to be working with her because Elena knew exactly what she wanted - the pose, the shape of the arms, and the trajectory of the jump. At the shoot, it wasn’t visible to the naked eye that Elena had done the splits in mid-air. In real time, it just looked like she had done a little flick with her legs. It was only seeing the photograph that I realised her athleticism, grace and pin-point precision.

To relax, Elena and her family enjoy spending time in Wendell Park, visiting museums and the theatre. “We love Chiswick High Road. It feels so much like home. We go on evening walks to Stamford Brook and towards Turnham Green. Christmas Day will be spent at home, and then we’ll visit friends on Boxing Day.”

And then it’s back to the ballet.

I can tell that Elena is completely consumed with the dance world and is in her element there. But there’s nothing haughty or grand about the Georgian-born dancer. As she puts it: “I’m lucky because I really love my work.”

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